Sky News presenter ‘nearly run over’ hours before General Election debate

A Sky News presenter was caught up in a near fatal accident on the morning of hosting a live General Election debate.

Host Beth Rigby opened up on her podcast Electoral Dysfunction about a memorable incident which occurred the morning of a Sky News debate earlier this month.

The 48-year-old explained that she was due to present the live special with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer on June 12.

Before preparation for the show began, Rigby decided to go for a run in Grimsby but little did she expect to be caught up in a near accident.

Rigby elaborated: “The night before, I woke up at 5am, like fully awake like: ‘Oh I’m doing this thing,’ and I can feel the adrenaline in my body, so I was like, I’ll go for a run.”

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“And I stayed at this place and I went down this track and it was a little loop, and you go to the main road. It was a private road, like a farm track, and you run back.

“So I’m running along with pumping music on, can’t hear a thing, and I go: ‘Oh I’m coming to the end of the road’, and I went to turn around.

“As I turned I nearly ran into a moving car, so I nearly got run over.

“I was like: ‘oh’ and I stopped and he put his brakes on. I stopped and we both looked at each other and he looked really cross with me.”

“As I would have been if I’d have been in a car because I was being a d**k runner which is running with headphones and turning and not looking, it’s because I was on a dirt track.”

This wasn’t the only run of bad luck that the presenter experienced that day either before the live debate.

Rigby continued: “Just before I was about to go on, I realised I hadn’t eaten since lunchtime, I was like ‘s***’, I better just have something in me’.

“And there was a packet of Haribos so I started eating them, and I was chewing… my filling fell out literally two minutes before I was going on air!”

The debate Rigby led was held on June 12, with the host asking both Sunak and Starmer questions before they were grilled by a live audience.

They discussed various topics including tax cuts, Sunak leaving D-Day commemorations earlier than expected, as well as junior doctors strikes.

Not everyone agreed with Rigby’s style of interview with The Chase star Mark Labbett taking to X to state: “Wish Beth Rigby would stop interrupting every five seconds, she is not a good interviewer #battlefornumberten.”

But not everyone agreed, with a viewer commenting: “She was poor at times with Starmer, interrupting too quickly, but she’s skewering Sunak with her research.

“When an interviewer gets more applause for their question than the PM’s answer, she’s doing a better job with Sunak.”